So Tired
by Allie357
Summary: It had been a long road, but now it was finally coming to an end. Sam and Dean die together for the very last time. One-shot, kind of sad. No pairings. Just brotherly love.


It was supposed to be an open and shut case. Burn the bones then hightail it out of nowhere Missouri. Dean Winchester hadn't expected that this would be the place that he died. He hadn't expected to die so slowly either, lying, bleeding next to his brother who was suffering similar wounds.

It all happened too quickly for either of the experienced hunters to react, to defend themselves. Standing over the grave of the culprit ghost terrorizing a little town with gruesome murders, Dean felt something slice into his back, plunging through muscle and flesh and bone. Gasping in unexpected pain, he fell forward onto the grave that they hadn't started to dig up just yet. He thought he heard his little brother cry out his name before hearing a familiar thump beside him.

"Sam?" he rasped out, hoping that his brother was at least still conscious. "Sammy?"

With difficulty, he lifted his head to try and get a glimpse of their attacker, even though in his slowing heart he already knew it was the ghost. Dean nearly laughed. After everything they had been through, literally going to Hell and back, hunting demons and angels and all other impossible creatures for years and years on end, they were ganked by the one easiest to get rid of out of them all. Unfortunately poetic.

Sam had turned fallen onto his back and was gasping for air, hands trembling as he tried to stem the flow of blood to his stomach. Dean, with wires of pain shooting up his back and abdomen, crawled the few feet separating them and also flipped onto his back. He bit down a cry of pain, but did nothing to stop himself from bleeding. There was no use anymore really. That was certainly a fatal wound, to the pair of them.

"Dean," his brother's voice said. Dean hadn't realized his eyelids had fallen shut until they snapped back open. He turned his head, the cool grass tickling the back of his neck to see Sammy's wide green eyes looking back at him, scared, properly scared for the first time in years.

And suddenly, Dean couldn't see the grown man, beaten and scarred until he hardly had emotions anymore, the man his brother had become, firm and rigid, never smiling anymore, or laughing. Instead, he saw his baby brother, maybe around four, the very first time something supernatural came at them, same to try and kill them. Baby Sammy, still too young to really understand, but old enough to know that he should be afraid and also old enough to know his big brother was going to watch out for him. Little Sammy, without his square, hunched shoulders and perpetual frown, or his ridiculously shaggy hair. That's who was lying next to him. Sammy Winchester who didn't know what their father did, how their mother died what he would become, scared of who knows what and looking to his big brother for help.

For the first time in a long time, tears pricked his eyes, and knowing it was all about to end for them, knowing this would be the last time he could say it to his baby brother, who should have grown up innocent, lived the life of a normal kid and not have to die before his fiftieth birthday, Dean found himself sobbing out, "I'm sorry, Sammy. I'm so, so sorry." It hurt in his chest to cry, but right now, the physical pain didn't matter, not anymore.

And Sam didn't tell him it was all right. He didn't tell him it wasn't his fault. He looked up to the night sky and said softly, trying to keep the hurt from his wounds out of his voice, "We could try and call Cas." But Dean shook his head.

He hadn't heard from Cas in forever, or what felt like it. Hell, he didn't even know if the angel was dead or not. But the actual reason he didn't want to call upon the angel to heal them, he spoke out loud, tears streaming down the sides of his face into the grass and dirt and mud underneath him. "I'm so tired, Sammy," he murmured. "I don't want to do this anymore."

And much to his surprise, Sam agreed, no hint of tears, no hint of despair. "I'm tired too, Dean. Really tired." Sam who fought for all that it was worth for both of them to live, to breathe just one more day, one more fight, was accepting death, so long as they died together.

The sharp pain dulled to soft ache now, and Dean felt himself slipping to complete darkness, each star above him flickering out one by one ever so slowly. "Do you remember?" Sam muttered into the quiet night air, hands no longer shaking, no longer fighting for breath. "When we used to just stop on the side of the road, sit on the Impala and look up at the stars?"

"Yeah, I do," Dean replied quietly.

"I wish we still did that," he commented.

"Me too."

And there were no more apologies, no I love you's. Just peaceful silence like they used to have back when the world was easier, simpler.

From beside him, Dean heard Sam release his dying breath. "See you soon, little brother," he muttered with a weak smile before the final star flickered out and he greeted Death as an old friend.

The next morning, when someone found the bodies, people would wonder just what those two boys were doing there, arms reached out to each other in comfort. People would wonder about their car and its contents, all of the guns and knives and sigils. People would wonder who these boys were, what they did, why they were even together.

People would tell stories about two mysterious travelers, their names long forgotten, who came and went, killing all evil in their path, protecting the world from things unseen. Two boys, two brothers, lonely wanderers with no real home but the car they drove in. And people would say that all that loneliness, all that death and pain and horror these two boys went through, all it did was make them kind.

Sam and Dean Winchester were buried in an unmarked grave in that little town in Missouri together, no one knowing their names, real or fake, or what they did for others. And that peaceful night underneath the stars, Sam and Dean died for the final time.

The brother's themselves woke up in their Impala, like they had just taken a very long nap, but both remembered. They could never forget, even if they wanted to.

Dean turned the key, felt the engine roar to life. And they drove down a long and winding road, each wondering for a small time when they would happen upon their little own personal slice of heaven until each realized in the same moment, that they were already there. It wasn't a place or a moment in time. Each of the Winchesters were happiest when they were seated in silence in their father's old car, the car they had grown up in, listening to classic rock, just driving with the windows rolled down and the open road in front of them.

And for the first time in many years, Dean smiled.


End file.
